The Political Interest: The Courage to Change

Retreat, some call it. Surrender, capitulation, appeasement. These are just a few of the damning words used by those who oppose Bill Clinton's decision to extend China's trading status as a most favored nation. The others aren't publishable -- but all of them are wrong. The words that better describe the President's action are realistic and courageous. The question, as Clinton said last Thursday, is not whether the U.S. should pressure Beijing to improve its abysmal human-rights record. The question is how best to do it while ensuring that America gets a piece of the action in the world's fastest-growing economy. The two interests may appear antithetical, but they are not.

For several reasons, Clinton is right to switch course and de-link the issues of human rights and trade. First, in threatening to throttle America's growing commerce with China because Beijing oppresses its citizens, the U.S. has stood alone. "No other nation agreed with us," said Clinton. "It wasn't like there was a big multinational coalition; it's not like sanctions on Iraq." Only America has annually debated forgoing trade with a nation that will spend more than $1 trillion during the next decade on infrastructure projects alone. Only America would permit moral considerations to preclude a company like Boeing from making a fortune in China. As everyone else has rushed to embrace China's markets, it has become clear that isolating Beijing is an impossibility.

Second, the yearly threat to end MFN was having no effect on Beijing's leaders, who view even whispered rebukes as "unacceptable interference." As Clinton said last week, a proud Confucian culture that prizes order over liberty is especially reluctant to take steps perceived as kowtowing to U.S. pressure.

Third, as the President understands, prosperity is often the best and sometimes the only route to freedom. Although "((economic)) growth alone will not democratize China," said U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, whom Clinton invoked to defend his stance, "it creates a fluid political and social environment and the emergence of a class of prosperous Chinese -- all of which fuel democratization. Evidence from South Korea and Taiwan shows that prosperity breaks down old controls and generates demands for improved political and social conditions."

The courage to change is often the very definition of leadership, and this particular Clinton flip-flop is better yet because the President expressed his new position without the legalistic fudging that has too often characterized his tenure. This time a foolish and failed policy was forthrightly acknowledged to have outlived its "usefulness," and squarely junked.